At least 22 people died and more than two dozen more are missing after a fire destroyed a supermarket in downtown Nairobi two days ago.
"The figure has gone up to 21," said Ali Mohammed, permanent secretary in the Ministry for Special Programmes, of the charred bodies being pulled out of the building by rescuers today.
Another man died from injuries after leaping from an upper floor of the burning store of Nakumatt, the east African nation's leading supermarket chain, on Wednesday afternoon.
Rescue operations were delayed by the risk of structural collapse. Throughout Friday, forensic police and firemen picked their way carefully through the gutted, smouldering debris, placing small red flags on what they thought were human remains.
The Red Cross said 47 people had been reported missing after the fire. Those would include the 22 confirmed dead.
Several other people leapt from the building while it blazed for hours on Wednesday, witnesses said. Some spoke of people trapped and screaming behind locked doors.
"I came running because I knew my mum was shopping there," Ishmael Abdul Mohamed
said amid a knot of angry people watching the rescue operation.
"They ordered all doors closed, no one to enter or leave. I was trying to break the window with a dustbin because my mum and my sister were trapped inside but someone cocked a gun at me."
Nakumatt managers, at a news conference today, denied any doors were locked at the time of the blaze. A company statement said the store "was fully fire safety compliant and had been installed with advanced fire/smoke detectors."
The cause of the fire was still unknown.
President Mwai Kibaki visited the scene, halting the recovery process for a short while. "We will do what we can to assist all those who are hurt by this tragedy. We should come out and help each other," he said.
Kenya's prime minister Raila Odinga, who is representing east Africa's biggest economy at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, also expressed concern.
"The fact that fire could gut down a business premise in a central place, a street from our fire headquarters... a stone's throw away from a major hotel says a lot about our disaster preparedness," Mr Odinga said in a statement.
"This event is the latest and saddest reminder to us both in government and private sector of the distance we still have to cover before we can declare Nairobi ... as a friendly hub for investment," he said.
Reuters